I’ve been reading reviews about this while I listened to the Possessed album, mainly to help me understand what it was that led me to feel disappointed by the fact that this album didn’t hit the mark for me. It’s not a bad album! My recent conclusion, all of which could be bullshit, makes me think the band had creatively “gone dry” while writing material for the Possessed album. About two thirds of the songs are rehashed formulas from their earlier material and the rest harshly highlights that the original lineup of Venom, as a creative working unit, was over, Mantas would be out the same year and Venom would quite never recapture the black magic madness that made them so exceptional on those early years. But hey, this album cannot be discounted and inessential, as it’s marks the end of an era by a band that broke through a lot of doors for a multitude of other metal movements in the years to come. Maybe easy targets of ridicule nowadays, but these guys were fucking heroes.
2016 UK/European reissue from Back On Black. It’s a 2xLP expanded release that includes the Njghtmare EP, a remix of “Nightmare”, and some live cuts. Pretty nice, actually.
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